Enraged

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[H]ard|Gawd

Joined

Aug 14, 2010

Messages

1,129

tl;dr: Windows 10 sucks

I was just in the middle of debugging a network stack when I noticed connections going out to Microsoft going in the background. No biggie, I thought, Windows Update/Defender/whatever. I decided to peek at some of the packets, out of curiosity, and found this:

These sons of bitches are sending out every single thing I do, every program running, every program I even switch to. And sending out constantly. Everything. I thought surely this had to be some local service this was going to, some stupidly designed inter-service/process communication, intercepting the DNS via HOSTS. Nope. It's all going out into the world and into Microsoft's open and waiting arms.

Looking into it, no surprise, it's telemetry from this abortion of an OS, Windows 10 -- telemetry that I've emphatically disabled in full -- yet somewhere along the line, Microsoft in its infinite wisdom (...and power, ...and wanton disregard for whatever the hell we, the peasantry, think or want) decided that that choice had an expiration date, and thus decided to reset it to the default setting of "1984", except this time without bothering to ask for my choice.

Sure enough, this infernal OS has enabled every single last bleeding option for telemetry: sending my app history (not just apps installed, but precise usage, any and every time I use any and every app), service history, voice history (not that anyone uses that), search history, browsing history, media history, location history; it's also reenabled ad tracking and personalization. All under the "feature" of "Windows Timeline." How #Blessed are we to have such a divine feature.

Logging into my MS account, I can see it's been collecting all this data for months and months. I wanted to see how far back it goes to see when it started to maybe figure out why or how it did, but go figure, the only apparent way to access the data is via an infinite pagination loading mechanism -- props to the genius UX designers at Microsoft for knocking yet another home-run out of the Microsoft Terrible-UX/UI stadium (don't get me started on Windows Defender's UX + UI, its senseless layout and design and its functionally obtuse uselessness, like how many clicks it takes just to see where a quarantined threat is on disk, and nevermind that that quarantining happens silently like an MS thief in the night, whisking away whatever it wants, whenever it wants, without so much as a peep about it to the user).

Should I be surprised? Nope. Am I still enraged? Yep. Time to employ the third-party utility route to go Tony Montana on this bitch:

Shens!

Limp Gawd

Joined

Apr 22, 2015

Messages

363

What about using Shutup10? https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10
The only issue is every time there is a windows update, you have to go back and re-run it to make sure MS has not changed your settings.

Supreme [H]ardness

Fully [H]

Joined

Jul 29, 2005

Messages

19,916

Disconnect your WAN connection. That’s the only way to stop telemetry. Microsoft collects it, google collects it, every site you visit collect it. There are bots here on this forum that collect data off every post you’ve made and made every word you’ve typed public on their search engine. You can copy and paste the text in my post 10 minutes after I post it into DuckDuckGo and it will direct you to this thread.

[H]ard|Gawd

Joined

Jun 1, 2016

Messages

1,690

My main desktop runs the Insider Edition where I have all telemetry enabled. I consider that my price for using Windows 10 for free. I don't do anything on that machine that I wouldn't be okay with it being live streamed to the public.

2[H]4U

Activity history helps keep track of the things you do on your device, such as the apps and services you use, the files you open, and the websites you browse. Your activity history is stored locally on your device, and if you’ve signed in to your device with a Microsoft account and given your permission, Windows sends your activity history to Microsoft.

2[H]4U

That's a new one, I've never heard of Activity History before. No wonder they're pushing the Microsoft account so hard!

I did an offline Windows 10 Home install the other day the avoid the whole Microsoft Account debacle. I installed the entire OS while offline and created a local account, once it was all done and booted to a fresh desktop I connected to the network to install drivers and what do you know - The account creation screen from the OOBE pops up asking me to create an online account instead!

2[H]4U

View attachment 201104
It's still not a secret. And yes they will pester you to do an online account the first time you start apps that prefer to be run from an online account. It doesn't bother you after that.

[H]F Junkie

Disconnect your WAN connection. That’s the only way to stop telemetry. Microsoft collects it, google collects it, every site you visit collect it. There are bots here on this forum that collect data off every post you’ve made and made every word you’ve typed public on their search engine. You can copy and paste the text in my post 10 minutes after I post it into DuckDuckGo and it will direct you to this thread.

Yep. Snowden knows best and I am not being sarcastic, if you want to be 100% fully private, do not connect you machine to a WAN, at all. The best you can do is minimize what you give out and leave it at that.

2[H]4U

Joined

Apr 10, 2007

Messages

2,719

I've been on 1909 for a couple days. It's not bad I killed everything I could find pertaining to telemetry. I just unhooked my ethernet when j installed. Got that other screen once. First time on w10 installed open shell immediately. like the weather app. Lol it's just a Jriver USB audio 2.0 storage rig for me anyway.

You make me laugh with your clueless defense of Windows 10. Go run Pi-hole (i run my Pi-hole systems with Unbound) and you'll see which OS's talk way to god damn much. My house is all Linux computers with the exception of my two work laptops (Windows 10 and Macbook Pro).

My work Windows 10 machine is the chattiest piece of shit imaginable just like the OP pointed out. I can't run stuff like Shutup10 on a corporate laptop, The only thing worse is my wife's iPhone but it isn't iOS being chatty.

The Macbook is pretty quiet but it isn't as silent as Linux. My Pixel 4XL is pretty quiet overall as well which is surprising. I have 6 Linux systems deployed (3 Arch, 3 Ubuntu LTS 18.04). My three Arch systems don't say a god damn word to the outside world unless it's me using them. My Ubuntu systems are for Plex, Pi-hole, Pi-hole with OpenVPN.

[H]F Junkie

You make me laugh with your clueless defense of Windows 10. Go run Pi-hole (i run my Pi-hole systems with Unbound) and you'll see which OS's talk way to god damn much. My house is all Linux computers with the exception of my two work laptops (Windows 10 and Macbook Pro).

My work Windows 10 machine is the chattiest piece of shit imaginable just like the OP pointed out. I can't run stuff like Shutup10 on a corporate laptop, The only thing worse is my wife's iPhone but it isn't iOS being chatty.

The Macbook is pretty quiet but it isn't as silent as Linux. My Pixel 4XL is pretty quiet overall as well which is surprising. I have 6 Linux systems deployed (3 Arch, 3 Ubuntu LTS 18.04). My three Arch systems don't say a god damn word to the outside world unless it's me using them. My Ubuntu systems are for Plex, Pi-hole, Pi-hole with OpenVPN.

I LOL that you think I have a clueless defense of Windows 10 but, whatever. I deal with facts as they are, not as people wish them to be. Because you see that some things are not occurring does not make you secure just as having anti virus software does not mean you cannot get a virus. (People feel their secure though and therefore, they must be secure.)

Oh well, choose what you want to use and I will respect it but, that does not mean you are somehow secure.

Except they will consider that a straw-man argument. If you do not like what Windows 10 is doing, fine, take care of it or use Linux, as some do. The idea that somehow, you are "secure" because you use a different OS from Windows is a best misguided, in my opinion. If you are serious about your own personal security and privacy, it will require a lot of work and due diligence just to stay that way.

[H]ard|Gawd

Except they will consider that a straw-man argument. If you do not like what Windows 10 is doing, fine, take care of it or use Linux, as some do. The idea that somehow, you are "secure" because you use a different OS from Windows is a best misguided, in my opinion. If you are serious about your own personal security and privacy, it will require a lot of work and due diligence just to stay that way.

There's a distinction between privacy and security. Most Linux distributions default to being more private than Windows. Sure, you can configure Windows to not issue so much telemetry but out of the gate your typical Linux distribution is going to be whisper silent compared to a newly set up Windows install.

Security, on the other hand, is where I disagree with a typical Linux enthusiast where the philosophy of 'security through obscurity' holds reign supreme. Nothing is hack-proof; nothing is fully secure.

[H]F Junkie

[H]F Junkie

That's a new one, I've never heard of Activity History before. No wonder they're pushing the Microsoft account so hard!

I did an offline Windows 10 Home install the other day the avoid the whole Microsoft Account debacle. I installed the entire OS while offline and created a local account, once it was all done and booted to a fresh desktop I connected to the network to install drivers and what do you know - The account creation screen from the OOBE pops up asking me to create an online account instead!

[H]F Junkie

There's a distinction between privacy and security. Most Linux distributions default to being more private than Windows. Sure, you can configure Windows to not issue so much telemetry but out of the gate your typical Linux distribution is going to be whisper silent compared to a newly set up Windows install.

Security, on the other hand, is where I disagree with a typical Linux enthusiast where the philosophy of 'security through obscurity' holds reign supreme. Nothing is hack-proof; nothing is fully secure.

Security through obscurity does work extremely well though. If I had to choose between wearing iron pants and walking through a mine field with 100 000 mines versus wearing regular pants and a field of similar size and only one mine I would choose the latter 100 times out of 100.

[H]ard|Gawd

Security through obscurity does work extremely well though. If I had to choose between wearing iron pants and walking through a mine field with 100 000 mines versus wearing regular pants and a field of similar size and only one mine I would choose the latter 100 times out of 100.

Oh, it works, until it doesn't. Once something is no longer obscure all your vaunted security advantages are gone. Look at Intel these last few years: Intel is about as secure as Swiss Cheese now, thanks to bugs no longer being obscure.

Limp Gawd

Joined

May 5, 2017

Messages

393

I think of it more like a house. Windows is like a house where someone in addition to you has a key to the front door (and some of the window locks are broken). Linux, in most cases, is a house with working locks on all of the doors and windows, and only you have the key. Anyone can leave the door or window unlocked, potentially letting intruders in. Each can also be made equally secure depending on the due diligence of the person, it just takes more work to get Windows to that point than Linux.

Fully [H]

Pretty much nothing. At that point nobody but Google figured out that they could make a lot more money with your data than selling software. Packet sniffing on outbound connections was a lot easier back then. Now every piece of software on your computer and every web service you use have an open line.